1936] MAMMALS OF OREGON 339 



Breeding habits. The young are brought forth in the spring in 

 the warm, shallow waters of southern bays where they can be care- 

 fully guarded by the wary and intelligent mothers. Scammon gath- 

 ered some evidence that the period of gestation was about a year 

 and that the females bred at intervals of about 2 years. Huey (19%8, 

 p. 72) found 1 bull mating with 2 cows on April 18, 1927, off Baja 

 California, and with each of the cows was an 18- to 22-foot calf. 

 The cow's length was estimated at 40 to 45 feet. 



Food habits. Apparently little is known of the food habits of the 

 gray whales. Green vegetation found in their stomachs may have 

 been swallowed accidentally in collecting their regular food of small 

 animal life, zoophytes, mollusks, crustaceans, and small fish. 



Economic status. The yield of oil from one of these small whales 

 is given as usually 20 to 25 barrels, and the baleen is of small amount 

 and coarse quality. Still there has been sufficient incentive to all 

 but destroy the species. To the native hunters along the coasts of 

 Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska the hunting of 

 these shore-frequenting whales has furnished food and many useful 

 byproducts of the chase and has developed hardy and vigorous tribes 

 of native hunters. 



Family BALAENOPTERIDAE : Finback Whales, Whalebone Whales 



BALAENOPTBRA PHYSALUS (LINNAEUS) 



COMMON FINBACK WHALE; SEX WHALE 



Balaenoptera relifera Cope, Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. Proc., p. 16, 1868. Type 



from coast of Oregon. 

 [Balaena} physalus Linnaeus, Syst. Nat, ed. 10, v. 1, p. 75, 1758. 



Type locality. Spitzbergen Seas. 



General characters. The finback whale, or "finner" is intermediate in size 

 between the right whale and the blue whale, but is distinguished from the 

 former by a well-developed finlike dorsal projection on the back toward the 

 tail, and from both by the large number of deep grooves on throat and belly. 

 It is one of the whalebone group with 2 well developed slabs of baleen some 

 2 feet long, of a light lead color, sometimes streaked with whitish ; throat and 

 belly heavily ridged longitudinally; eyes close to corners of mouth; pectoral 

 fins and tail about as in the California gray whale, but top of head less arched, 

 much more flattened. Color of upper parts plain blackish or sometimes brown, 

 lower parts, including lower surface of tail flukes white. 



Measurements. Total length, about 60 to 75 feet; tip of nose to tip of side 

 fins, 15 feet; width of tail flukes, 14 feet (Scammon). 



Distribution and abundance. These whales have been recorded 

 along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington, but their 

 wider range seems lost in the uncertainty of relationship with forms 

 to the north and south and in the Atlantic bearing other names. 

 The type of Balaenoptera velifera described by Cope from the coast 

 of Oregon is the only definite record for the State. The type speci- 

 men (a section of the baleen) seems to have been lost, and until 

 other specimens are collected or the animals are carefully observed 

 and described it will not be known whether to use Cope's name 

 velifera, or the older name of the Atlantic finback physalm. 



Apparently these whales are not abundant along our coast of the 

 Pacific and never have been in such numbers as some of the other 

 species. 



General habits. Scammon says these whales frequently gambol 

 about vessels in mid ocean as well as close into the coast, darting 



